Quotes by Lexicographers - Page 5

The fountain of content must spring up in the mind, and he who hath so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief he proposes to remove.
Samuel Johnson
In selecting men for office, let principle be your guide. Regard not the particular sect or denomination of the candidate - look to his character.
Noah Webster
The great would not think themselves demigods if the little did not worship them.
Pierre-Claude-Victor Boiste
The best way to make something last is to believe that it won't.
Barbara Ann Kipfer
If the changes that we fear be thus irresistible, what remains but to acquiesce with silence, as in the other insurmountable distresses of humanity? It remains that we retard what we cannot repel, that we palliate what we cannot cure. Life may be lengthened by care, though death cannot be ultimately defeated: tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration; we have long preserved our constitution, let us make some struggles for our language.
Samuel Johnson
Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.
Samuel Johnson
Language is the dress of thought.
Samuel Johnson
Experiences is just paying attention as time passes.
Erin McKean
Those who do not feel pain seldom think that it is felt.
Samuel Johnson
There are those who don't understand the nobility of horror fiction. 'Isn't there enough horror in the world?' they ask. For all other forms of literature, the value of human life is optional. For horror fiction, it's absolutely necessary. If we don't value the life of the threatened protagonist, we can't be scared. And through our fear, we better understand the individual fears and values of our species across the world.
Ebenezer Cobham Brewer
Is there such depravity in man as that he should injure another without benefit to himself?
Samuel Johnson
Hell is paved with good intentions.
Samuel Johnson
Quotation is the highest compliment you can pay an author.
Samuel Johnson
I can discover within me no power of perception which is not glutted with its proper pleasure, yet I do not feel myself delighted. Man has surely some latent sense for which this place affords no gratification, or he has some desires distinct from sense which must be satisfied before he can be happy.
Samuel Johnson
What', said he, ' makes the difference between man and all the rest of the animal creation? Every beast that strays beside me has the same corporeal necessities with myself; he is hungry and crops the grass, he is thirsty and drinks the stream, his thirst and hunger are appeased, he is satisfied and sleeps; he rises again and is hungry, he is again fed and is at rest. I am hungry and thirsty like him, but when thirst and hunger cease I am not at rest; I am, like him, pained with want, but am not, like him, satisfied with fullness. The intermediate hours are tedious and gloomy; I long again to be hungry that I may again quicken my attention. The birds peck the berries or the corn, and fly away to the groves where they sit in seeming happiness on the branches, and waste their lives in tuning one unvaried series of sounds. I likewise can call the lutanist and the singer, but the sounds that pleased me yesterday weary me today, and will grow yet more wearisome tomorrow. I can discover within me no power of perception which is not glutted with its proper pleasure, yet I do not feel myself delighted. Man has surely some latent sense for which this place affords no gratification, or he has some desires distinct from sense which must be satisfied before he can be happy.
Samuel Johnson
One who has lost confidence can lose nothing more.
Pierre-Claude-Victor Boiste
Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.
Samuel Johnson
To go and see one druidical temple is only to see that it is nothing, for there is neither art nor power in it; and seeing one is quite enough.
Samuel Johnson
All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own, and if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.
Samuel Johnson
The true art of memory, is the art of attention
Samuel Johnson
Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye.
Samuel Johnson
men do not suspect faults which they do not commit
Samuel Johnson
Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome." -
Samuel Johnson
While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till it be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.
Samuel Johnson
When a citizen gives his suffrage to a man of known immorality he abuses his trust; he sacrifices not only his own interest, but that of his neighbor; he betrays the interest of his country.
Noah Webster
Nothing has more retarded the advancement of learning than the disposition of vulgar minds to ridicule and vilify what they cannot comprehend.
Samuel Johnson
The more words you know, the more clearly and powerfully you will think...and the more ideas you will invite into your mind.
Wilfred Funk
Perhaps it's no coincidence that the word words is an anagram of sword. Well-used words cut through ambiguity and confusion like a sharp sword in the hands of an expert swordsman.
Anu Garg
ALL words are made-up: Do you think we find them fully formed on the ocean floor, or mine from them in some remote part of Wales?
Kory Stamper
Don't, Sir, accustom yourself to use big words for little matters.
Samuel Johnson
This is one of the disadvantages of wine, it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.
Samuel Johnson
Every state of society is as luxurious as it can be. Men always take the best they can get.
Samuel Johnson
our triumphant age of plenty is riddled with darker feelings of doubt, cynicism, distrust, boredom and a strange kind of emptiness
Samuel Johnson
There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good.
Samuel Johnson
The reasonableness of the command to obey parents is clear to children, even when quite young.
Noah Webster
The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.
Samuel Johnson
[C]ourage is reckoned the greatest of all virtues; because, unless a man has that virtue, he has no security for preserving any other.
Samuel Johnson
Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings." Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson
Tyranny is the exercise of some power over a man, which is not warranted by law, or necessary for the public safety. A people can never be deprived of their liberties, while they retain in their own hands, a power sufficient to any other power in the state.
Noah Webster
Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye, and while we glide along the stream of time, whatever we leave behind us is always lessening, and that which we approach increasing in magnitude.
Samuel Johnson
Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.
Samuel Johnson
Difficult do you call it, Sir? I wish it were impossible. [on hearing a famous violinist]
Samuel Johnson
But when thou findest sensibility of heart, joined with softness of manners, an accomplished mind, and religion, united with sweetness of temper, modest deportment, and a love of domestic life; such is the woman who will divide the sorrows and double the joys of thy life. Take her to thyself; she is worthy to be thy nearest friend, thy companion, the wife of thy bosom.
Noah Webster
The only end of writing is to enable readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.
Samuel Johnson
To enjoy and learn from what you read you must understand the meanings of the words a writer uses. You do yourself a grave disservice if you read around words you don’t know, or worse, merely guess at what they mean without bothering to look them up.For me, reading has always been not only a quest for pleasure and enlightenment but also a word-hunting expedition, a lexical safari.
Charles Harrington Elster
You can never be wise unless you love reading.
Samuel Johnson
You don’t owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don’t owe it to your mother, you don’t owe it to your children, you don’t owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked ‘female’.
Erin McKean
Our minds, like our bodies, are in continual flux; something is hourly lost, and something acquired.
Samuel Johnson
I know not why any one but a schoolboy in his declamation should whine over the Commonwealth of Rome, which grew great only by the misery of the rest of mankind. The Romans, like others, as soon as they grew rich, grew corrupt; and in their corruption sold the lives and freedoms of themselves, and of one another.
Samuel Johnson
No one is much pleased with a companion who does not increase, in some respect, their fondness for themselves.
Samuel Johnson
There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity.
Samuel Johnson
Men know that women are an overmatch for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or the most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.
Samuel Johnson
My congratulations to you, sir. Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.
Samuel Johnson
My congratulations to you, sir. Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.
Samuel Johnson
Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life . . . the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use.
Samuel Johnson
People have now a-days, (said he,) got a strange opinion that every thing should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do so much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken. I know nothing that can be best taught by lectures, except where experiments are to be shewn. You may teach chymistry by lectures.—You might teach making of shoes by lectures!
Samuel Johnson
There is nothing so minute or inconsiderable that I would not rather know it than not know it.
Samuel Johnson
Ignorance, when voluntary, is criminal, and a man may be properly charged with that evil which he neglected or refused to learn how to prevent.
Samuel Johnson
The foundation of all free government and all social order must be laid in families and in the discipline of youth. Young persons must not only be furnished with knowledge, but they must be accustomed to subordination and subjected to the authority and influence of good principles. It will avail little that youths are made to understand truth and correct principles, unless they are accustomed to submit to be governed by them.
Noah Webster
Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. When we enquire into any subject, the first thing we have to do is to know what books have treated of it. This leads us to look at catalogues, and at the backs of books in libraries.
Samuel Johnson